


Three (Or, Keith Does Math and Doesn't Like It)

by sinsideout



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Blow Jobs, Confrontations, Falling In Love, First Time Blow Jobs, He just wants to sleep, Love Confessions, M/M, Sneaking Around, and Keith's gayness, obsessive contemplation of the number three, poor lance, spaceships and sex, why did I write this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-21 16:52:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13745247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinsideout/pseuds/sinsideout
Summary: And Keith was never fantastic at math, but he was pretty sure in that moment that three was definitely the gayest number in the universe.





	Three (Or, Keith Does Math and Doesn't Like It)

**Author's Note:**

> So, I started this in July of 2017 and never finished it until now, when I have an essay due tomorrow at 9 am that I haven't even started. Please pray for me, my grades, and my immortal soul for this sin I have committed. Enjoy you heathenish bastards, I love you all.
> 
> I barely edited this so I'm sorry if there's mistakes.

He’d done the math -- over, and over, and over again -- in his head.

 

Or, rather, he’d done the reasoning, because there wasn’t that much math involved once Keith realized that the only important mathematical factor in this whole situation was -- quite simply -- the number three. And, at this point, he was 100% sure that the number three now seemed to be the _gayest_ number in the universe, and he had proof.

 

Reason number one: There’s been a grand total of three guys that Keith has ever felt… _that way_ about.

 

The first was back on Earth, when he was still in the Garrison. He’d developed a quick obsession for one of the upperclassman, whose claim to fame among the ranks of younger cadets such as Keith was his exceptional hand-to-hand combat skills, the likes of which he would showcase to anyone, anytime, anywhere -- even in the cafeteria. In reality, he was rash and annoying, and in looking back, Keith can definitely feel the searing shame of poor taste in character creeping up his chest; but the guy was ripped and blonde and pretty and Keith was scrawny and thirteen and lacked a male role model in his life, so at the time Keith was fine with chalking his infatuation up to, like, needing a dad or something.

 

When Shiro came along, Keith was quick to assume that this was the same situation -- a heroic and powerful older figure in his life from whom he naturally sought acceptance and approval.

 

This resolution was pretty quickly foiled by the sex dreams, though. When he woke up from a cold sweat a few days into their epic space journey to save the universe or whatever having had a _remarkably_ vivid image of Shiro doing things a father figure should definitely _not_ be doing, Keith was admittedly a little shaken.

 

As a result, conducted more so by some pretty intense self-denial and guilt than his own conscious effort, he found himself avoiding Shiro in every way he could -- without being a _total_ asshole, of course, because it’s not like any of this was Shiro’s fault and he did genuinely like the guy. But this was all new and weird and Keith _didn’t_ like this sudden sexual awakening bullshit (really, he didn’t have time for this) and just wanted to go back to normal again. Needless to say, his sexual crisis aside, he _couldn’t_ be into Shiro -- it just felt _wrong_ , no matter how broad his shoulders are or how thick his hair is or how his scar makes him look like a weirdly sexy back alley pitfighter or -- well, that’s beside the point. The dreams needed to go away; he couldn’t compromise the integrity of an authority figure like that.

 

And eventually, the dreams did go away, and man crush number two was over and done with, as far as Keith was concerned. To be honest, Keith found that it was actually pretty easy to escape Shiro and his angsty team-leader appeal; he found that all his mind needed was a bit of a distraction to curb the sexual frustration of living like an abstinent hermit in space ( _sure_ , he was kind of a hermit before, but at least he didn’t have to be abstinent).

 

But of _fucking_ course that distraction just had to be Lance. Of all the goddamn people in the whole universe to which he now had complete and unrelenting access to, his stupid subconscious just had to pick that obnoxious prick to obsess over. Him and his ridiculous facial care routine ( _“You wouldn’t understand, you’ve got blackheads that are as old as you are. You’re one forgotten face wash away from certain death, dude.”_ ) or his god-awful puns (“ _I love Blue -- she’s my_ mane _man… get it? Mane man, main man? Keith?”_ ) or his unrelenting flirting with all moving things (which, really, did not help Keith’s situation, at all, so, _thanks a lot_ , Lance) really made this a real fucking problem.

 

But Lance it was and there really wasn’t any other way for Keith to suppress himself this time around, because he was pretty much out of options here.

 

So that was that.

 

Reason number two: Keith had broken what he liked to call the “three-inch rule.”

 

See, Keith liked to consider himself a man of great resolve in addition to being an excellent problem-solver, which he strove to exemplify in all aspects of his being, both physically and mentally -- several years living alone in the middle of the desert offers a lot of time to work on those kinds of things. So, upon realizing that Lance a) wasn’t going to disappear from his life any time soon, and by extension his attraction to him neither, b) wasn’t really all that bad of a guy, sometimes (after all, they have saved each other's’ lives on multiple occasions at this point), and c) was actually pretty hot (okay, even Keith couldn’t deny that with a clean conscience), Keith saw and accepted the need to find a solution, and quickly. His frustration at himself for whatever the fuck was going on and at Lance for just, like, fucking _existing_ in the first place was mounting pretty heavily on his shoulders and was affecting the way he performed on the battlefield, and that wasn’t okay. He couldn’t risk the lives of his teammates, under any circumstance. Not cool.

 

Of course, there were three possibilities for dealing with this issue.

 

Option number one was to kill Lance. Of course, that wouldn’t be ideal, primarily because Keith was worried that his attentions might turn back to Shiro once Lance was effectively eliminated from the picture. It wasn’t the best for other reasons too, and, _fine_ , maybe it was a little morally questionable, so option number one was crossed off of Keith’s list pretty fast.

 

Option two was to curb the obsession and hook up with the next willing participant he could find on whichever planet they stopped at next. Now, of course this had many downsides, quite notably the endless amount of alien STD’s that were surely out there waiting to ruin his day. He’d messed around with a few people here and there -- nothing serious -- but they were all human, and he knew how to prevent that kind of stuff. Plus, it wouldn’t be the easiest to get what he needed and go without his crewmates noticing he was gone, and Keith _was not_ a big fan of awkward conversations. So, option two was struck out with the first.

 

And so came option number three.

 

Fuck Lance.

 

All-in-all, the upsides to this solution really outweighed the downsides, of which there were, of course, three. One, that Lance might not want him, and Keith would have to deal with his wounded pride and the embarrassment of being rejected by the dude who has literally flirted with half the galaxy. Two, that, if Lance does say yes, the fact that they’ve had sex would make things weird among the rest of the crew, if they ever found out what Keith and Lance were up to when the artificial sun went down. And three, the sex might be bad.

 

Not that these cons were listed in any particular order of importance, but Keith would probably be lying if he said that downside number three wasn’t the most intimidating to him. He was, by the technical definition of the word, an absolute virgin when it came down to it. That’s not to say he ever really held any sentimental value to his metaphorical deflowering, but it would kind of blow to have all of this trouble ultimately bring very little satisfaction, in the end.

 

But we’ve already established Keith thought himself a resolute and logical young man, and he certainly was a lot of things but he was _not_ a liar -- so option three it was. He was going to fuck Lance.

 

Getting the guy into bed was a remarkably easy task for all the effort that Keith had poured into the works.

 

Keith had caught up to him after a sparring match with Hunk, the Blue Paladin looking a little sweaty in his ridiculous bright blue boardshorts, a bottle of water in his hand and a towel tossed over his shoulders as he wandered off to the pool to chill.

 

“Lance!” Keith called after him from down the hall. Lance stopped, and glanced over his bare shoulder before turning around completely to face him. And, _boy_ what a view.

 

Keith met him there at the end of the corridor and took a nervous, shaky breath as Lance tilted his head forward and narrowed his eyes, frowning. “You okay, dude? You look like you’re about to ask me on a date.”

 

He felt like a deer in headlights; he hadn’t really thought of it, but that _was_ essentially what he was doing, if you counted getting naked under the sheets with one of your teammates as a date. And for some reason, that made the nerves that were simmering in his gut rise and shiver the swelling balloon of anxiety in his adrenaline-filled heart.

 

Lance must’ve noticed this strange reaction, and huffed a bit of air through his nose and gave him an incredulous look. “That’s not what you’re doing, right? ‘Cuz, if you are, you should’ve at least ran a comb your mullet or something. Do that and I might actually say ‘yes’.”

 

“I -- uh. You would?” Keith breathed, blinking.

 

Lance exhaled and his smile fell from his face, and he just stared for a second, any hint of smugness wiped from him as he processed Keith’s response. In fact, all emotion was cleared from his face and suddenly his expression was unreadable, and Keith was already kicking himself for being such a _fucking idiot_ saying what he had. _He was joking! How could you even think for a second that he would ever in a million years even consider th--_

 

“I mean, why not?”

 

Lance had shifted his weight from one foot to the other and was idly fiddling with the hem of his shorts, and, okay, _woah_ . _What_ ? Was he _nervous_?

 

“You’re not bad looking, aside from,” he gestured to Keith’s hair, “the _obvious_ , y’know? In fact, uh, you’re pretty damn _good_ looking, actually. And, I guess you’re pretty okay when you’re not being a hardass all the time. I don’t see why we couldn’t have a pretty good time together when we’re not out saving everybody.”

 

Keith’s heart was hammering so hard in his ears at this point that he was pretty sure his organs had rearranged themselves and the whole of his cardiovascular system had relocated into his skull. Lance thought he was attractive. Lance just admitted that he thought he was attractive. Lance the Blue fucking Paladin thought he, Keith, the Red fucking Paladin, was “ _good looking_ .” What’s more, Lance wanted to go on a _date_.

 

“Anyways,” Lance laughed, rubbing the back of his head and avoiding eye contact in the way that he did when he was nervous. “You, uh, you needed something, right? What is it, uh… what is it you… needed… Keith?”

 

He trailed off as Keith stood there relearning English and staring blankly at the Paladin in front of him. _Lance wanted to go on a date_.

 

“You,” he finally choked. “I need you.”

 

“Me?” Lance swallowed, his eyes narrowed again.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Need me for what?”

 

“For this,” Keith said, and whatever shred of uncertainty was forcefully cast out of his mind and ejected out into motherfucking space because that’s where they goddamn were and honestly if it meant that he got to take either ends of the towel around Lance’s neck and pull him into a kiss whenever he wanted then _space is where he was meant to be_.

 

Lance let out a muffled _mmfff!_ from the force, the water bottle falling to the metal floor with a thud and a his hands coming up to grip Keith’s wrists, and for a second there Keith was certain he was going to be pushed away, but _no?_ Lance was moving, but not away from Keith. Rather the opposite, actually, as he pulled Keith immediately closer and guided his wrists to wrap around the back of his neck, the towel that was clutched in Keith’s fists dropping to the floor with the bottle in favor of running his hands up the short crop of Lance’s hair at the back of his head.

 

And, okay, this was a good idea, if Keith could say so himself. Which, admittedly, was a little difficult with Lance’s lips moving over his own, and, _oh,_ _alright_ , Lance’s tongue in his mouth, and his back pressed against the corridor wall, and one of Lance’s hands fisted low in his long hair with the other holding his waist so that their hips were pressed into one another’s. But, if he could, he definitely would say so himself.

 

It was only when his lungs were beginning to feel about as empty as one of the airlocks that he pushed at Lance’s shoulders, trying to signal to get off of him so he wouldn’t die because that would be extremely counterproductive for both of them at this point. Lance groaned a bit, frustrated at the mere suggestion of parting, and the vibration against his lips sent a shiver down Keith’s spine. Nonetheless, he was dying and that would suck so he gave Lance a bit more than a nudge to push him away.

 

Lance huffed, his eyes still closed and breathing in Keith’s airspace, hovering for a second before pulling back and opening his eyes to look into Keith’s, a wide grin taking form as he took in the thick red flush that had spread across Keith’s face.

 

“So, dinner? Seven o’clock?” he asked, half laughing. “Say yes, dude. I’m an excellent cook. Mama raised me right.”

 

“Okay,” Keith heaved, still letting the air flood back into his lungs.

 

“ _Fuck,_ you’re hot.” Lance’s eyes dropped to rack over Keith’s body from where it was pushed between him and the wall.

 

“Look who's talking,” Keith managed, one of his thumbs brushing over Lance’s slightly puffed lips.

 

Lance watched him do it, and when their eyes met again, all blue had been chased out of his irises to make room for his dilated pupils. “You got any other plans today?” he asked, stepping away from the wall and pulling Keith with him by the wrists.

 

“I, uh,” Keith stuttered, trying to keep up as Lance dragged him towards the lift at the other end of the hallway.

 

“Good, me either,” came the response from in front of him.

 

“What about dinner?” Keith asked, a little bewildered but too turned on to protest whatever _the fuck_ was happening.

 

“We’ve got, like, six hours ‘til seven, don’t we?” Lance asked as he furiously poked at the control panel to summon the elevator down to their level. “I think I can make you cum at least four times before then.”

 

If Keith had any less self-control than he did, Lance would probably have been one step closer to his goal in that moment because he nearly came in his jeans at that (and _hell_ he would never be able to live that one down). Before he could even get himself together, the doors slid open and he was being dragged into the thing, Lance commanding the castle to rocket them up to his room, thank you very much.

 

There was a heavy pause of silence between them as the doors slid shut, and it was just enough time for Keith to decide that he needed to get a little more control, here. After all, wasn’t he the one who started this?

 

He reached out and touched Lance’s bare shoulders, stepping up behind him and pulling Lance’s back flush against his chest. Lance was a little taller than him, yeah, so the positioning was a little weird, but he didn’t seem to mind as he cast another shit-eating grin over his shoulder at Keith, that was quickly canceled out by a groan as Keith gave the length of his neck a lick punctured with a bite to his ear. And, okay, that tasted kind of gross because Lance was still sweaty from his workout and all, but, in the grand scheme of things, Keith really couldn’t complain.

 

“And I bet I can make you cum at least _five_ times,” Keith said, the spirit of challenge heating up, clearly ever-present between them.

 

And, of course it wasn’t like Lance was about to protest, so he just shivered and said, “Then you better get on that, man. Clock’s running.”

 

That was how Keith found himself on his knees, in an elevator, with Lance muttering profanities and fisting Keith’s hair (the mullet did have its benefits, it seemed), and violating the “three-inch rule.”

 

See, Keith may have been a virgin, but he wasn’t exactly _inexperienced_ , and he’d certainly done some exploring when the initial _I think I’m gay_ crisis first hit him however long ago that was, but he had set his rules. Keith had discovered pretty fast that he _really_ liked sucking dick. Probably because it was a bit of a power trip, but he was still very much a bottom. So, whenever he’d hook up with someone on a supply run, he’d be careful to not take him in past three inches. Somehow, that was justification enough for it to not be gay (“ _Just an experiment!_ ”) which, in retrospect, was _ridiculous_ , but he was freaked out and young and didn’t know what he wanted.

 

Now, there in the elevator, any shred of his younger self would be kicking and screaming at him for breaking his own self-imposed restrictions, but with the way that Lance was moaning, present-day Keith couldn’t give less of a fuck than he did in that moment.

 

When seven o’clock finally rolled around, the orgasm record of the evening had been set by Lance, the filthy teenager, at -- you guessed it -- three, as the two had really underestimated their own refractory periods. And he really wasn’t kidding about being a good cook; how he’d even managed to make something with more substance than goo was beyond him, but Keith was treated to an evening of quesadillas and some shitty alien soap opera in a language neither of them understood but apparently was one of Coran’s favorites, given that Lance had stolen it from his room.

 

And it didn’t stop there; in fact, now that he’d got him, Lance apparently had no intention of letting Keith out of his possession. On more than one occasion after team training, Keith had found himself manhandled into the nearest life pod or supply closet by an overly aroused and overeager teenager, and more often than not he found himself waking up in Lance’s bed to the sound of the shower running and the man singing some old tune he hadn’t heard in years but making him feel more at home than he’d ever felt in ages.

 

Weeks went by and Keith had become alarmingly comfortable in this new routine, of this unspoken thing he and Lance had started up. They hadn’t told anyone what they were doing, because if both of them were being honest, they weren’t entirely sure what exactly it _was_ that they were doing. Keith had thought that sleeping with Lance would get him out of his system and out of his mind, but if anything, it just made it all worse. Now, Lance was all he thought about, all he worried about, and all he wanted. And he’d been _so certain_ that this would end it all, that he could go back to being emotionally isolated and content on his lonesome (which was a certain degree of unhealthy that he really didn’t want to think about) but now he couldn’t fathom giving up whatever this was that had hatched between them.

 

No one knowing was both a huge relief, because he didn’t have to worry about defining this _thing_ to himself if he didn’t have to explain it to someone else, but also a _massive_ pain in the ass, because he couldn’t be open with his affection to Lance.

 

Sneaking around the others was a pain, too. Keith wasn’t sure if the number of times they’d been nearly walked-in on was a testament to their carelessness, the rest of the team’s invasiveness, or the spaceship herself being far less expansive in size than she’d originally appeared to be. Regardless, Keith and Lance had been repeatedly interrupted mid-groping in the lounge, jumping from each other and praying that Hunk and Pidge didn’t notice their flushed faces and general states of disarray. Insofar, they hadn’t seemed to, but Keith would be damned if Pidge didn’t know half the things in the universe, the kid was so observant.

 

It was harder hiding things from Allura and Shiro, because as the unofficial leaders of the group they were rather attuned to changes in behaviors, and it wasn’t all that unnoticable that Lance and Keith’s bickering had been on the significant decline lately.

 

And don’t even get Keith started on Coran, who he was sure that if it ever came out Keith and Lance had been sleeping together he’d get an endless barrage of questions about the human mating habits that he would rather not answer or, like, even think about.

 

He didn’t want to think about a lot of things, really. Most of all were his feelings. He didn’t think there would be feelings. He thought this was just about sex. But the longer this went on, and the harder it became to keep his hands to himself and his heart in his chest the harder it became to deny that maybe he was feeling something for the Blue Paladin.

 

Which leads Keith to reason number three.

 

It’d been (you guessed it) about three months since the encounter in the corridor, and they’d powered through several seasons of the soap opera and were finally on the series finale -- or, at least, the end of what Coran had in his personal collection. Tchk’alnav had just admitted to his brother, K’ork Lervan, that it was him who helped stage Ju’vo’s death so she could leave her husband and run away with the baker from Ellevose, and the two were so close to finding out who killed Orit’h.

 

Lance was falling asleep in Keith’s lap where they laid in his bed, the sheets pushed back and around so that the two were comfortable and reclined. His eyes kept opening and closing, and every now and then he’d yawn and stretch out to keep himself awake, but it was a losing battle and Keith knew it.

 

He ran his fingers through Lance’s hair, gently running his nails over his scalp and lulling him to sleep. Orit’h’s sister had just confessed that it was her late husband who had carried out the murder as Lance’s breathing was drawing out longer and his chest was rising and falling with the steadiness that signaled he was pretty much down for the count, and Keith looked down at his face and found himself smiling.

 

He couldn’t stop himself from murmuring the three words (yes, of course it had to be _three_ words) he’d been pretending weren’t pressing in his mind and his heart for weeks now.

 

“I love you.”

 

“You _what_?”

 

Suddenly, Lance’s eyes blinked open and met Keith’s, upside down and trying to focus on him through shock and sleep.

 

“Fuck!” Keith nearly launched himself out of the bed he was so startled, and ended up banging his head on the headboard.

 

Keith stumbled out of the bed clutching the back of his head, and fell very gracefully onto the floor with a string of profanities. “Holy _fuck_ Lance! Why’d you do that, you scared the shit out of me!” He rubbed at what he was sure was a welt the size of Russia forming on his skull, and looked up at Lance to where he was still sitting on the bed.

 

There was a silence as their eyes reconnected, and Lance was still blinking at him.

 

“You love me?”

 

Keith felt like he couldn’t breathe, hopefully not because he was hemorrhaging from his skull and losing oxygen at an alarming rate.

 

“I mean, yeah. I do. I think,” Keith admitted, the pain in his skull dulled by the gripping of his heart. “A lot.”

 

Lance nimbly climbed out of bed and sat down on the floor in front of him. In the background, the soap was still playing, and Keith vaguely registered that Orit’h was in fact not dead but was the baker from Ellevose all along, but he couldn’t care less about what was going on when Lance was sitting in front of him and looking at him with the expression he was wearing.

 

“You love me,” he repeated, sounding almost unbelieving, but this time it wasn’t a question.

 

“I love you,” Keith affirmed.

 

Suddenly Keith had a lap full of Blue Paladin and was being furiously kissed, two long hands holding the sides of his face and holding him against Lance’s lips. He did his best to grab onto Lance to keep them from falling over in a heap, but he was caught so off-guard that it was only a matter of seconds before Keith found himself flat on his back with Lance leaning over him, a look of heavy emotion playing deep in the blues of his eyes.

 

“I love you, too, you asshole,” he practically choked, looking like he was going to cry.

 

“You do?”

 

“Yeah, man. I do. Of course I do.”

 

Keith narrowed his eyes. “You sure?”

 

Lance huffed, and just leaned down and kissed him again.

  
And Keith was never fantastic at math, but he was pretty sure in that moment that three was _definitely_ the gayest number in the universe.


End file.
